11. Geo
— ? —
Geo
Vivian shows up in the middle of a weekday afternoon.
I’m alone in the kitchen when the doorbell rings, Harrison out somewhere unwinding the tour, city by city, refund by refund. Val is at school, blissfully unaware of the adult drama swirling around her, and I’ve been using the quiet hours to do something I haven’t done in years.
Sing.
Not performing, not recording, just singing.
Old songs I used to love, melodies that have been locked away in some dusty corner of my memory since Val was born.
The recording equipment I brought from the apartment is set up in the corner of the guest room, waiting for me to be brave enough to actually use it.
The doorbell rings again, more insistent this time, and I wipe my hands on my jeans and head for the foyer.
I open the door expecting a delivery driver, or maybe one of Harrison’s business associates who didn’t get the memo about meeting locations.
I find my stepsister.
Vivian looks like a ghost of the woman who helped destroy my life.
Hollow-eyed, thin, her cheekbones sharp beneath skin that’s lost its glow.
She’s wearing clothes that look slept in, and her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before.
Fear.
“Please,” she says. Her voice cracks on the word. “Please let me talk to you.”
My first instinct is to slam the door. My second instinct is to scream, to let out all the rage I’ve been carrying since that video appeared on my phone. My third instinct, the one I actually follow, against every piece of common sense I possess, is to step aside.
“Five minutes.”
We sit in the living room, surrounded by the furniture Harrison and I picked out together, the art we argued over, the accumulated debris of a life that no longer exists.
Vivian perches on the edge of the couch like she’s afraid to take up too much space. Her hands twist in her lap, restless and ashamed.
“I know you hate me,” she begins.
“Do you?”
“I know what I did. I’m not going to sit here and dress it up.”
“Then why are you here?”
She’s quiet, her eyes fixed on a middle distance I can’t see.
“I wanted him,” she says finally. “Not the fame or the career. Him. I built a whole person out of a voice on a record when I was sixteen and then I got to meet the person, and instead of getting over it I upgraded.”
The words land in the space between us, ugly and honest and somehow smaller than I expected.
“And what? You thought you’d just take him from me?”
“I thought I could make it true.”
Vivian laughs, bitter and broken. “I thought if I was good enough, if the music was good enough, if the world wanted us together badly enough, then it would become true. Like if I just stayed close long enough, he’d realize that I was what he really wanted.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
The question is out before I can stop it. I’ve needed the answer from her.
Vivian’s laugh is wet and awful. “No.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not now.”
“I’m not lying. That’s the humiliating part.”
She won’t look at me. “He never touched me. Not once. I wanted him to. I practically threw myself at him, and he’d just… talk about you. About Val. He’d be right there with me and somewhere else entirely.”
Her voice breaks. “I wanted him to want me, and all I ever got was watching him miss you. Nothing happened, Geo. I wish it had. At least then I’d have had something real to show for what I burned down.”
“But you sent me the video.”
Her face crumples. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to leave.”
The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other like she’s been holding them back for months. “Because I wanted you to give up. Because you had everything I wanted and you didn’t even seem to appreciate it.”
Her voice cracks. “I was jealous. Of the life you had, the family you had, the husband who chose you. I thought if I could just make you see that he didn’t really love you, you’d let go.”
“You thought you’d get to have him.”
“Yes.”
“But how did it leak publicly?”
I lean forward, needing to understand. “The video was everywhere, Vivian. Every entertainment show. Every gossip site. If you just wanted me to leave, why would you torpedo Harrison’s career too?”
Vivian’s face goes pale. “I didn’t. I swear to God, Geo, I only sent it to you. To your phone. I never sent it anywhere else.”
“Then how?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice is climbing, desperate. “Someone on the tour crew, maybe? There was this guy, one of the sound techs, he was always lurking around with his phone. Or it could have been a cloud hack, Harrison’s security was terrible, I told him a dozen times.”
She stops, takes a breath, forces herself to calm down. “I know it looks like I burned everything down, but I wanted Harrison’s career. That was the whole point. Why would I destroy the thing that gave me access to him?”
I stare at her. The logic tracks. It’s insane and self-destructive in its own way, but it tracks.
“So you sent it to me privately,” I say slowly. “And someone else leaked it publicly.”
“Yes. I think so. I don’t know for sure, but that’s the only thing that makes sense.”
The word hangs between us, inadequate and strange.
“But I didn’t get to have him,” Vivian continues, and her voice has gone flat now, drained of all the desperate energy.
“The moment you left, the moment he found out what I did, it was over. He canceled everything. The tour, the album, the partnership. Dad told me. Linda told Dad. He spent weeks trying to find you, calling everyone you knew, hiring people to look for you.”
Her mouth does a thing that isn’t a smile. “He never once looked for me.”
I sit with that information. Let it settle into the landscape of everything I thought I knew.
“He ended his career for you,” Vivian says. “I offered him everything I had, and he threw it away to look for you.”
“That doesn’t fix what you did.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
Vivian stands, and I can see how much it costs her, the effort of rising, of facing me, of saying the things she came here to say.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.
I just wanted you to know that I know what I did, and I know it was wrong, and I’m going to have to live with it for the rest of my life. ”
She walks to the door. Stops. Doesn’t turn around.
“You want to know what I still can’t sit with?”
Her voice is barely a whisper. “I knew it was wrong while I was doing it. I knew I was destroying your life, and I told myself it was okay because I deserved him more. Because I wanted him more. Because wanting something badly enough should mean you get to have it.”
She laughs again, that same broken sound.
“God, I was so stupid. I convinced myself I was the protagonist of some great love story, and you were just the obstacle. The boring wife. The woman standing in the way of destiny.”
She finally turns. Her face is wet.
“But you weren’t the obstacle, Geo. You were the story. You were always the story. And I was just the villain too selfish to see it.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know if there’s anything to say.
“He loves you,” Vivian says. “He always loved you. He just forgot how to show it. And I let myself believe that forgetting was the same thing as moving on.”
She leaves.
The door closes behind her.
I sit alone in the wreckage of my life, surrounded by furniture I picked out with a man who hurt me, in a house I fled from and somehow ended up back in, and I can’t locate a single clean feeling.
Vivian came here to confess. To take responsibility. To tell me that I was the story all along, that Harrison loves me, that everything that happened was the result of her delusion and his weakness and a series of choices that spiraled out of control.
I should feel vindicated, or triumphant. I should feel like I’ve finally gotten the answers I needed.
Instead I just feel tired.
Tired of the anger and the hurt. Tired of carrying this weight around, letting it define every moment of every day.
I think about Harrison’s hand on my hip this morning. About the way we fit together in Val’s tiny bed. About the coffee he makes exactly the way I like it, and the way his eyes track me across a room, and the way he says my name like it’s a prayer he’s afraid to speak too loudly.
I think about the gold dress, still hanging in the closet upstairs.
And Vivian’s words: He loves you. He always loved you. He just forgot how to show it.
But for the first time in months, I find myself wondering if maybe, maybe, there’s something left worth saving.